A few days back there was a report that the entire Iraqi 51’st division including its commander had surrendered. However apparently it turns out that the commander has gone on Al Jazeera to deny this and there are reports of soldiers from the 51’st still fighting.
http://www.presstelegram.com/Stories/0,1413,204~21474~1265455,00.html
According to this story:
"Even so, some of the celebrated capitulations have turned out to be less than advertised. U.S. officials were quick to announce the surrender of the commander of the 51st Division. On Sunday, they discovered the “commander’ was actually a junior officer masquerading as a higher-up in an attempt to win better treatment.”
Anyone has more information on this? Regardless of whether this was deliberate misinformation or sincere mistake, it appears to be a blow for the administration’s credibility when it comes to claims about the war.
In all seriousness, I don’t think anyone is taking anything said about this war without a healthy teaspoon of salt – especially since the anticipated propaganda victories and surrenders have failed to materialize.
I dunno, I see a lot of hype in the press about cheering Iraqis in cities, or mass surrenders, or the discovery of chemical weapons factories – but very little followup in the same press when those things turn sour or are proven false a day later.
Saddam mentioned the 51st in his most recent speech. So the debate here really is about Saddam. I have no doubt that we would exaggerate the amount of that division that surrendered. That isn’t the big deal. What we need to know is if there was enough of that division left for Saddam to cite it as making a positive contribution to the Iraqi side.
We’ll probably find out after the war is over and then it’ll be [sup]the 51st what?[/sup]
There was a specific claim about the commander surrendering which appears to be wrong regardless of what the rest of the division has done. So at the least it’s a blunder by the administration. Even if it wasn’t intentional it damages their credibility.
Out of pure curiosity, do you have a cite? If he mentioned the 51st, why are people thinking he is dead? What did he mention about them? I had a busy day today, I missed this news.
Isn’t it amazing what political bias does to perceptions and the English language?
Your friend tells you she’s started an affair with a nice single boy. A few weeks later, she tells you that she found out he’s married. Would you consider your friend’s credibility destroyed, or that of the “nice single boy”?
Fer chrissakes, the person who lies is the person not credible, not the person who believes the lie. English 101.
Bear in mind that he’s been known to use body doubles, so it’s not outside the realm of possibility that the real Saddam Hussein was killed and that the TV appearances are being performed by a double.
The fact that he commended the general in command of the 51st doesn’t prove that the 51st didn’t actually surrender. It could be that he had to commend them or else the other divisions would wonder why he hadn’t mentioned them and would wonder if they’d been captured or annihilated, or–horrors!–had surrendered.
“Fer chrissakes, the person who lies is the person not credible, not the person who believes the lie. English 101.”
No the person who repeats lies without verifying them also loses credibility. Either the administration was dishonest or incompetent; either way they have become less credible when they make other claims about the war.
[Heehaw]
We’re not ones to go round, spreading rumors,
Oh, we’re just not the gossipy type;
We’re not ones to go round, spreading rumors,
So, you better be sure to listen close,
the first time.
[/Heehaw]
CyberPundit, I agree with you. In Sua’s analogy, more context would have to be established to determine the credibility of the friend (“you mean he was wearing a wedding band, and you still thought he was single?”). Essentially, it requires assessing gullibility. We often don’t assign credibility to gullible individuals. And in the real example, we don’t expect our military to be gullible.
If you can establish that the victim shouldn’t have been vulnerable to the con, I would question the victim’s credibility.
And in the real instance, has that been established? What evidence did the junior officer bring with him that he was commander of the 51st Division? Was he driving the commander’s car? What uniform was he wearing? Did he have doctored identification on him? Did the US military have photos of the true commander of the 51st Division? If yes, did the junior officer look like him?
Does CyberPundit know any of this?
No. Without even attempting to establish whether the victim should have been vulnerable to the con, she decided that the US admininstration is “dishonest or incompetent.”
Gosh, talk about jumping to conclusions based upon inadequate evidence …
I am not sure what your second example means but neither of them really applies to this situation. The government is supposed to have experts who can check up these things. They can’t be compared to some random con-artist victim. If they blunder their future claims become less believable and therefore their credibility suffers. Even if they were just “gullible” that is still the case. Your court analogy is wrong because we aren’t talking credibility while testifying against the con-artist but credibility about whether the person will be conned in the future.
All this is in fact assuming that this was a sincere mistake which is by no means certain.
Sua,
If the government didn’t have the means of verifying that the officer was real they should have said so. They could have said that they were in the process of checking how legitimate the surrender was. Or they could have said nothing and waited till they had checked it out. They did after all catch the guy on Sunday.
Sua, the facts from the field are not relevent. I’ll acknowledge that they could have been victims of a ruse.
But for “US officials” to make the announcement, I am sufficiently comfortable with my assessment that they should not be vulnerable to such cons. Futher, we, the general public and consumers of the news, shouldn’t either.
So, on the very same day they capture him, they discover he wasn’t who he said he was. Gosh, what dupes.
And that kind of blows a hole in you insinuations of dishonesty, doesn’t it? Why would they acknowledge that he wasn’t the right guy the very day they captured him if they were trying to pull the wool over people’s eyes.
[sup]the 51st what?[/sup]